Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems

Estimating the value of changes in water quality requires the definition of biophysical features that link changes in ecosystems to changes in social systems. Those linking features must be interpretable to people and serve as effective ecological indicators. This work defines a linking feature that is appropriate for capturing existence values in a forthcoming national stated preference survey of Clean Water Act regulations. Further, we modeled and spatially predicted this feature to account for the dependence of survey respondents’ preference on baseline aquatic conditions near them. We outline steps to provide insights on the mechanisms that will aid in forecasting changes in the linking feature in responses to candidate policy options.

Data and Resources

Field Value
accessLevel public
bureauCode {020:00}
catalog_conformsTo https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
identifier https://doi.org/10.23719/1532239
license https://pasteur.epa.gov/license/sciencehub-license.html
modified 2023-12-31
programCode {020:000}
publisher U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD)
publisher_hierarchy U.S. Government > U.S. Environmental Protection Agency > U.S. EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD)
resource-type Dataset
source_datajson_identifier true
source_hash f000a35525703303980b755bd1976b688909de4d16d5021fda08bc5cfe8dbca5
source_schema_version 1.1
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • AmeriGEO
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • CKAN
  • GEO
  • GEOSS
  • National
  • North America
  • United States
  • biological-condition
  • economic-valuation
  • lakes
  • observed-to-expected-taxonomic-composition
  • random-forest-modeling
  • rivpacs
  • streams
isopen False
license_id other-license-specified
license_title other-license-specified
maintainer Ryan Hill
maintainer_email hill.ryan@epa.gov
metadata_created 2025-09-24T02:34:11.304264
metadata_modified 2025-09-24T02:34:11.304273
notes Estimating the value of changes in water quality requires the definition of biophysical features that link changes in ecosystems to changes in social systems. Those linking features must be interpretable to people and serve as effective ecological indicators. This work defines a linking feature that is appropriate for capturing existence values in a forthcoming national stated preference survey of Clean Water Act regulations. Further, we modeled and spatially predicted this feature to account for the dependence of survey respondents’ preference on baseline aquatic conditions near them. We outline steps to provide insights on the mechanisms that will aid in forecasting changes in the linking feature in responses to candidate policy options.
num_resources 4
num_tags 15
title Estimating biotic integrity to capture existence value of freshwater ecosystems